Laura Kelm, director of water quality programs at the Great Swamp Watershed Association, wraps up the Spring 2015 Breakfast Briefing Series by introducing the organization brand new watershed report card program. The new program is designed to provide members of the public with an annual update on the quality of water in the five major streams feeding the Great Swamp and the Passaic River. This is a special Saturday morning briefing beginning at 10 a.m. A continental breakfast will be served. Background In 2013, the Great Swamp Watershed Association published State of the Streams in the Great Swamp Watershed, a comprehensive report that assembled and analyzed chemical, visual, and biological water quality data collected over the course of a decade from the five main streams feeding the Great Swamp and the Passaic River. Requiring months of labor by GSWA staff and volunteers, the project continues to inform our understanding of the changes our watershed has experienced, and how the organization can continue building and reporting on its growing database of scientific observations. Based on the success of State of the Streams, GSWA has developed a new Water Quality Report Card program for the Great Swamp region. Issued annually, the report […]

David Kluesner, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 2 team leader for community affairs, returns to provide an update on plans for the remediation of hazardous pollution along the last eight miles of the Passaic River. A continental breakfast will be served beginning at 8 a.m. Background On April 11, 2014 — within 48 hours of David’s last appearance at a GSWA Breakfast Briefing — EPA Region 2 Administrator Judith Enck held a press conference announcing the Agency’s draft plan for addressing contamination along the Lower Passaic. Stretching eight miles from Belleville to Newark Bay, this section of river forms part of the Diamond Alkali Superfund site centered around Newark’s Ironbound district. For more than 30 years in mid-20th century, Diamond Alkali and other chemical manufacturers used the Passaic River near Lister Avenue in Newark as a dumping ground for hazardous waste products such as PCBs, dioxins, pesticides, and mercury. Embedded in layers of river sediment, tides and currents quickly began spreading these dangerous substances up and down the Passaic from Dundee Dam in Garfield to the river mouth on Newark Bay. As local chemical manufacturers came and went, an environmental disaster brewed beneath Passaic waters and inside the Ironbound. […]

Since its first appearance in North America in 2002, the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) has killed more than 50 million trees. The first confirmed sighting of this destructive insect in New Jersey came last year in Somerset County. Now is the time to prepare for the devastation it may cause.  

On Saturday, September 19, Director of Water Quality Programs Laura Kelm will introduce the Great Swamp Watershed Association’s (GSWA) inaugural Great Swamp Watershed Report Card.  

The Great Swamp Watershed Association is having a free beer tasting party, and you’re invited! What’s the catch? You have to……click below to find out!